Les avatars du «sentiment de l'existence», de Locke à Rousseau

Abstract

John S. Spink : The «feeling of existing » from Locke to Rousseau. To declare that we have an awareness of the self as the object of an «obscure idea » meant a preference for Malebranche, whereas to be content with an awareness of our existence as an «idea of reflexion » meant a preference for Locke. The French word sentiment was criticized by Locke, who preferred sensation and idea and concerned himself with the understanding and not with the affects. But sentiment de l'existence (feeling of existing) was used in France for an affective awareness of existing. In England, Hume also looked to the affects as a basis for personal existence which the understanding could not give, while the notion of a non-affective aperception , launched by Leibniz, dominated in Germany. The different conceptions of the feeling of existing in various French writers, from Boulainviller to Condillac and Maupertuis, are here reviewed. In the fifties a retreat from Locke to Malebranche appeared ; Locke was abandoned to the Encyclopédistes. Rousseau attempts to be compre hensive and gives a full literary development to the theme, while Condillac remains the precursor of the modern theory of reflective awareness.